Good Media

A Passion for Internet Safety
Andrea Rock, contributing editor

Let’s face it, our children are using the Internet, every single day. Which sites they land on may be of concern to us. We must constantly be vigilant, as some trusted sites may not always remain trustworthy. Facebook is a good case in point. Last year, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) revealed that the beloved social networking site had been found, on several occasions, to have violated their own privacy policies, allowing applications (apps) that would give users’ names, and even their friends’ names, to advertisers and Internet tracking companies. This surveillance is supposedly anonymous, but at least one of the firms linked specific Facebook ID information to its own database, and transmitted that information to a dozen other firms. Facebook has taken steps to correct that and other privacy problems.

Now, one must be at least 13 to create a Facebook page, you argue. True enough, but it is easy for younger children to forge an identity. Consumer Reports found that at least 7.5 million Facebook users are younger than 13. Of those, more than 5 million are 10 and under, and most of their accounts were unsupervised by parents. On Facebook one million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying last year. Unfortunately, parents in increasing numbers are not only allowing young children to participate in Facebook, they are helping them do so.

Equally unfortunately, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, wants to legally fight COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, in the hope of making the site an educational experience. He hasn’t yet figured out how to make that happen, but assures parents that children would be protected. We’ve seen how well that has worked to date!

Facebook is not alone in the arena of failed privacy protection. Another Wall Street Journal investigation reveals that popular children’s websites use more tracking technologies than do adult websites. “Cookies,” “beacons,” and other tracking devices were attached to 30% more children’s websites than adult sites. These tracking tools follow all of us as we surf the Internet, allowing the data-collection companies to build profiles that they sell to advertisers. They eliminate names in these profiles, but give all other information to the buyers. This process is legal.

And it is a process that is not just a function of big business. Many children’s sites are run by small businesses or even mom-and-pop operations. One site, y8.com, included ties to a pornography site, xnxx.com, despite the company’s denials of that to WSJ. One of the consistent problems seems to be the chain of accountability. Primary websites avoid accountability, at least initially, by relying on the word of their service providers that users’ privacy won’t be breached. But time and again, that promise has been contradicted by the facts.

So what’s a parent to do?

  1. Read constantly about what is going on in Internet privacy for our kids.
  2. Read “How to Avoid the Prying Eyes,” here, to learn steps you can to check and delete cookies and beacons.
  3. INHALE “Enough is Enough,” the website of Donna Rich Hughes, a leading proponent of Internet safety for kids for over a decade: http://www.enough.org/inside.php?tag=8J8WW5894. This site includes valuable links both to filtering software: http://www.internetsafety101.org/filteringandmonitoring.htm and kid-friendly search engines and portals: http://www.internetsafety101.org/filteringandmonitoring.htm.

  4. Monitor, monitor, monitor what your kids are looking at on the web!

For a wealth of articles that explore the controversy and also give parents suggestions on how to protect their kids’ privacy, go here: http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know.